Kiss of Steel (32 page)

He could imagine that washcloth, soaped up and wet, her hand clutched around it as she stroked him elsewhere. His jaw tightened with strain.

“You ought to see your friend Barrons,” he replied, lifting his head. “Weren’t watchin’ where ’e were goin’. Ended up on ’is back like a turtle in ’bout four inches o’…we’ll be generous and call it mud.”

Honoria stopped running the cloth over him. Their eyes met and hers narrowed almost imperceptibly. “My friend Barrons,” she repeated.

Blade leaned back against the tub, watching her through lazy eyes. He caught her wrist and dragged it to his chest, indicating for her to continue soaping him.

“It’s a funny thing, keepin’ secrets,” he said. “You never know ’ow much the other person knows.”

Her face drained of color, and Blade’s heart plummeted into his gut. His cock actually flagged at the sight.
Jaysus
. It had been a shot in the dark, but he’d hit the target. He felt as though the world staggered around him.

“If ’e’s good enough for you, then why ain’t I?” he growled. “Bloody ’ell. Do you love ’im?”

“
Love
him?” Honoria’s jaw dropped. A certain look came into those luscious brown eyes—a look that spelled trouble. For a moment he thought maybe he’d made a terrible mistake.

“Love him?” she repeated. The washcloth dripped all over the floor, clenched in her fist. She seemed to consider the question for a moment. “Yes. I believe I do, though I sometimes wish otherwise.” She threw the washcloth at him, but he caught it, soap suds flying everywhere.

“However, you asked the wrong question,” she replied. “You should have asked whether I wanted to kiss him.”

His head shot up, a hound scenting the fox. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m very tempted not to tell you,” she replied.

Blade caught her wrist. “Honoria,” he warned. “Was ’e your lover?”

“Let me go.”

“Answer the question.”

Their gazes met in charged silence. Honoria tugged at her wrist, but there was no way in hell he was letting her go until she answered him.

“No,” she whispered. “Nor do I want him to be.” The fight seemed to drain out of her. “Though I should have made you suffer.”

Relief flooded through him, leaving him breathless. “You ain’t that cruel.”

Sudden tears flooded her eyes. “Aren’t I? Perhaps not intentionally.” Two big fat tears slid down over her cheeks and her shoulders slumped. “I want to be so angry with you right now, but I haven’t the strength for it.”

A tear dripped from her chin into the bath. He stared at the ripples and then remembered the bruises beneath her eyes. Bruises he’d overlooked in the face of his sudden, leering jealousy. “You were cryin’. Before you come ’ere.”

“Yes.”

Blade reached up, stroking her cheek. A fat, salty tear slid over his thumb. “And you needed me ’elp.” Guilt burned in his throat. “Before I started actin’ like a great, bleedin’ lummox.”

She pressed her cheek into the palm of his hand like a cat seeking a pat. Her hand came up, holding his in place. “I’ve done something very wrong. I thought…I thought I could stop it. I thought I could help Charlie, but all I’ve done is hurt him.”

Light shimmered off the sudden flood of liquid in her eyes. She closed them and the tears streaked down her cheeks.

Blade couldn’t help himself. He leaned up and kissed her cheek, pressing his lips against the salty rime. “You ain’t got a mean bone in your body. Whatever you done, it were done with the best of intentions.”

“Was it? Or was it something else? Pride? Or the desire to…to control the situation? I’ve been so bloody blind. It’s been too late—” A sob caught in her throat, but she bit it down. “Too late for a while.”

He slid his arms around her, trapping her tightly against his chest. Curse him, but it felt good to hold her like this, without any of her usual customary stiffness. “Hush, luv,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

Tentatively her arms slid around him, and she burrowed her face into the crook of his neck. “I’m so scared. But you’ve been so good to me. I never expected it. Not from a blue blood. It makes me think—hope—that maybe it isn’t so bad after all.”

“Now
I
don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout, luv.”

She drew back, eyes serious. She wasn’t the type of woman made for crying, and yet something punched him in the chest at the sight.

“Can I trust you?” she asked.

There was a weight of seriousness to the words that stopped him from simply replying. He gave it some thought. “I would never ’urt you. Or anyone you cared for.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” he repeated.

She gave him a sad little smile. “I think you should get out of the bath, then. There’s something you need to see.”

Chapter 19

The walk home was silent. No matter what questions Blade asked, Honoria refused to answer him. Indeed, the brief spurt of willfulness she’d shown in his rooms had faded under the weight of her weariness. She was quiet now, mostly withdrawn into herself, her arms wrapped around her body as though she were cold.

Blade paused in front of the house. “We’re ’ere.”

Honoria looked up, blinking.

“Are you goin’ to invite me in?” he asked, his curiosity rampant. This was the most she’d ever allowed him to see into her life. The walls that she held up against him were slowly crumbling, and he was intent on seizing this chance to tear them down.

Honoria drew her shawl tighter. “Do you ever think that maybe if you’d done things differently, you might not have failed?”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Aye. But we ain’t ever given those choices. That’s the joy o’ hindsight.”

“Is it…is it bad?”

“Is what bad?”

“Becoming a blue blood?” She gave him an earnest look as though she desperately needed to hear his answer.

A chill ran down his spine as little connections started forming in his mind: the brother who was always ill, the locked door. “Honoria, what exactly is the problem you need ’elp with?”

She gave him a heartbroken look. Then opened the door. “Inside.”

Blade pushed his way inside, taking in the room. The sister looked up from the table, where she was toying with a variety of springs and cogs, trying to put some form of clockwork toy back together. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and she sprang to her feet.

“Has there been any change?” Honoria asked in that quiet voice she’d taken to using.

The sister shook her head. “He’s asleep.”

Honoria crossed to the door and unsnapped the lock. She hesitated once more, then slowly pushed the door open. Reluctance showed in the curve of her spine. She didn’t want to do this, but he suspected she had no choice.

The door swung open. Blade caught a glimpse of a narrow bed, an empty jar of colloidal silver, a syringe, and a young boy turning listless eyes toward them. The boy’s hands were tied to the bed and thick bandages swathed his lower arms. Blade felt a chill at the sight. Bloody hell. The boy had gone for his own wrists.

Better
that
than
the
alternative
.

White-hot anger speared through him at the thought. It could just as easily have been Honoria or her sister lying there with her throat torn out. And Blade wouldn’t have been able to blame the boy. He knew how harshly the hunger bit when a boy was starved for blood. People ceased to be relatives or friends and became nothing more than a source of food. Vision fled. Sound fled, leaving a roaring rush in the ears. And then the smell of it. Coppery. Warm. The taste of it, so fresh. Like water to a man dying of thirst, finally satisfying an ache that nothing else could assuage.

A moment of sheer ecstasy. But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was that the hunger no longer hurt so much. Burning relief that almost made him sob. And then the gradual returning to his self, crouched on the floor, licking the blood from his fingers. Emily’s blood.

No
.

Pain speared through him—a wound that would never heal, no matter how much time passed. He’d spare anyone that pain if he could.

Blade’s throat went dry. He could barely speak for fear he’d say something irreversible. Honoria couldn’t have known. She’d never felt the violent, all-consuming
need
. He wanted to wring her neck. “’Ow long’s ’e been like this?”

“Six months since it started,” she whispered. “Charlie? Are you awake?”

“Go ’way,” the boy murmured tonelessly. “Don’t come close.”

Honoria hovered near the bed. “We need to speak. No more needles. I promise.”

Charlie rolled his head toward them. His gaze focused on Blade—and then sharpened. He jerked on the bed linen tying him to the bed, an almost unconscious move. “He’s a blue blood,” he said.

“This is Blade. He’s here to help you.”

Blade moved forward and knelt on the edge of the bed. “I’m goin’ to untie you,” he said, holding the boy’s gaze.

“No!” Charlie went rigid. “No, please. It’s best like this.” His gaze drifted past, toward where Honoria hovered. “Please don’t.”

“Look at me,” Blade commanded. “Charlie, look at me.” The boy met Blade’s eyes, his own wide and frightened. Bloody hell, it was like looking into a mirror of himself at that age, lost and alone and so terribly afraid that he would hurt someone. Blade had had no one to help him through the ordeal and teach him control. Only an object lesson that would haunt him to the day he died. “I won’t let you ’urt ’em. I’m stronger ’n you. Faster. You can’t get to ’em without goin’ through me.”

Honoria gasped. “Oh, Charlie, don’t be silly. You wouldn’t.”

Tears glimmered in the boy’s eyes as he stared desperately at Blade. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Blade replied firmly.

Wetness spilled down Charlie’s cheeks. A sob tore from his throat. “Thank you. Oh, God, thank you. It’s all I can think about. I dream about it—” He broke into a storm of weeping. “They don’t understand. Nobody understands.”

There was a swish of skirts. Blade held his hand out, stopping Honoria in her tracks. “
I
understand.” Anger filled him again and he tore the bed ties off, flinging them aside.

Honoria flinched.

“You shoulda come to me,” Blade said, unable to help himself.

She swallowed. “I thought…”

“Don’t you even bloody finish that sentence,” he warned. “I ain’t like the Ech’lon.”

A little quiver of anger trembled in her clenched fists. “How was I to know that you wouldn’t simply kill him? You have a certain reputation for it.”

“I don’t ’urt the innocent.”

“Of course. The Devil of Whitechapel doesn’t hurt the innocent.” Sarcasm laced her tone. “Do you know that where I come from they use your name to frighten children into obeying?”

He shot her a heated look. “’Ave I ever, by word or deed, caused you to fear me?”

Honoria glared back, just as stubborn. Her eyes dropped first, seeking out her brother’s figure on the bed. “No.”

He stared at her a moment longer. How he wished to shake her, not for her brother’s misery but for the blatant fact that she had not trusted him. Indeed, if Charlie’s outbreak had not become so bad, she most likely wouldn’t have come to him at all. Only desperation had driven her to reveal her secrets. For a moment he had thought that something had grown between them, a secret little affinity. But now it seemed that he was the only one who thought that.

Blade turned back to the boy. “I’m goin’ to offer you me blood. There’s enough o’ the virus in it to tip you over. You’ll feel better for the moment, then it’ll ’urt—worse than you ever suffered—while the virus makes certain changes in your body. One or two days and then it’ll clear and you’ll be…different.” He settled on the edge of the bed. “’As to be your choice, though, lad. It weren’t mine and I’d not force you to it.”

Charlie considered him and then asked quietly, “Does the hunger ever go away?”

“No. But I can teach you to control it.”

Not the answer Charlie wanted to hear. He looked at Honoria nervously. “If I don’t take your blood? What then?”

“The ’unger’ll get worse,” he said. “You’ll lose control and go after someone, sooner or later. I’d ’ave to put you out o’ your misery before you tore through the rookery. Or worse, turned vampire.”

“What if I asked you to do it now? To spare me this?” Charlie’s burning blue eyes met his.

Honoria gasped, but again Blade held his hand out. “I don’t deal with murder.”

Charlie’s stubborn mouth thinned. Though the boy was fairer than Honoria, he bore a great deal of resemblance to her in expression and mannerism. “That’s not fair. You said it was my choice. Then this is what I want: I want to die.”

“That’s a noble sentiment, boy-o, but ultimately it ain’t necessary.” Blade deliberately shrugged. “And rather dramatic too. Seems it’s an in’erited trait.”